Intro to Product Management

Intro to Product Management

Welcome to your beautiful journey into a product management career!  

Before diving deeper into the day-to-day job of product management and learning hard skills, let's first explore what exactly a Product Manager (PM) is — and why this role exists in the first place.

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Who is a Product Manager?

In essence, a Product Manager plays a central role in the company, bearing responsibility for the success of a specific product.

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There’s been extensive debate about what exactly a product manager does and the responsibilities of this role. However, these resources provide some of the clearest insights:

• What is Product Management? — by Lenny Rachitsky
• A Product Manager’s Job — by Josh Elman
• Brian Chesky’s take on Product Management — Airbnb CEO
• Leading Through Uncertainty — Brian Chesky (YouTube)
• Brian Chesky’s Changing Product Philosophy — Medium

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Basic Skills You Need to Start Your Career

Let’s break the PM skillset into two main categories:

• Soft skills (communication, leadership, empathy)
• Hard skills (analytics, business understanding, UX fundamentals)

Both are equally important to your success.

• 3 Skills to be an Awesome Product Leader — by Tami Reiss
• Essential Soft Skills for PMs — by Lenny Rachitsky
• The Technical, Business, and UX Skills Every Product Manager Needs (video)

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This is your foundation — a starting point to understand what product management truly means before diving deeper into the PM Core Activities.

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